Etched in Light
CASSILS (Los Angeles/NYC) is a Canadian transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Cassils' art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle, and empowerment. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils' work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.
Cassils currently has a solo exhibitions at Walter Phillips Gallery Banff Center for Arts and Creativity (AB) and an upcoming solo at SITE Santa Fe (NM). Cassils has had recent solo exhibitions at HOME Manchester (UK); Station Museum of Contemporary Art (TX);, Perth Institute for Contemporary Arts(AU); Ronald Feldman Fine Arts (NYC); Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (PA); School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MA); Bemis Center (OH); MU Eindhoven, (NL).
Cassils’s work has been featured at the Marina Abramović Institute Takeover at Southbank Centre, London, UK; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, AZ; Oakland Museum of California, CA; Kunstpalais, Erlangen, Germany; MUCEM, Marseille, France; Deutsches Historisches Museum and the Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany; MUCA Roma, Mexico City, Mexico; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA; and Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica. Cassils’s performances have been featured at The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; The National Theatre, London, UK; ANTI Contemporary Performance Festival, Kuopio, Finland; Wiener Festwochen, Vienna, Austria; Dark Mofo, MONA, Hobart, Tasmania; and Queer Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia. Cassils’s films have premiered at Sundance International Film Festival, Park City, UT; OUTFest, Los Angeles, CA; Institute for Contemporary Art, London, UK; Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, Brazil; International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands; M+, at West Kowloon, Hong Kong, China; and Outsider Festival, Austin, TX for Early Career Retrospective: Cassils.
Cassils is the recipient of the USA Artist Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Fleck Residency from the Banff Center for the Arts, a Princeton Lewis Artist Fellowship finalist, a Villa Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, the inaugural ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, California Community Foundation Grant, Creative Capital Award, MOTHA (Museum of Transgender Hirstory) award, the National Creation Fund and Visual Artist Fellowship from the Canada Council of the Arts. Cassils’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired, The Guardian, Art Forum, and academic journals such as Performance Research, TDR: The Drama Review, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Places Journal, and October. Cassils is the subject of the monograph Cassils, published by MU Eindhoven in 2015; and is the subject of a new catalog published by The Station Museum of Contemporary Art.
Cassils is an Associate Professor in Sculpture and Integrated Practices at PRATT Institute.
Cassils, ‘Etched in Light: (Washington D.C. Trans Day of Visibility, March 31, 2024)’, 2024. Photo: Ashley J. Mitchell. Courtesy and © the artist. Selected for AFI’24 by LACE, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, USA.
Etched in Light (2024)
CASSILS
Selected by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), USA
Audiences of Etched Light encounter the ongoing political realities of transgender rights in America. Through the vision and direction of Cassils, a Transgender artist, viewers are guided through a visual and sonic performance that aims to combat these oppressive systems through the creation of a large-scale cyanotype. The performance took place on Trans Day of Visibility (March 31, 2024) at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Cassils chose this location to engage with the history of the site as a platform for countless past activists. Over 100 performers gathered together and were instructed to lie down on four large canvases in choreographed positions. These canvases were then subsequently transformed into cyanotypes with the imprints of the performers’ bodies left behind. The use of cyanotypes provided Cassils space to elaborate on the history and impact of photography whilst commenting on the power to deny the voyeuristic gaze often imposed on Trans bodies. By including performers from across the country and around the world, this project cultivated community and networks that will endure through times of systemic failure. By lying down together, the performers embraced their strength and care for one another, creating a powerful symbol of solidarity.
LACE selected Cassils’s film 'Etched in Light' (2024) as the performative action embodies AFI this year’s theme of solidarity. Taking place at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on 2024’s International Transgender Day of Visibility, Etched in Light was a collaboration between Cassils, activists, organizers, dancers, and over a hundred performers, including Blood Is Here vocalists Roco Córdova, Carmina Escobar, and Dorian Wood. The performers’ poetic demonstration consisted on lying together in groups on large-scale canvases, holding pre-arranged compositions and body gestures for 20 to 30 minutes, enacting care and togetherness. The performers washed the canvases and carried them around the lawn of the Washington Monument to develop the images of their bodies’ silhouettes as cyanotypes, in a collective action of joy and belonging, finding power in being together and caring for each other.
LACE Curator and Director of Programs Selene Preciado:
Liberation and survival are possible through togetherness and solidarity, and we need to give visibility to the power of being together